There’s so much happening off the field (and off the court) that you might see another action/reaction post later this week …

Action: UCLA hires Jim Mora Jr. as its fourth football coach since 2002.Reaction I: Bruin fans — at least the Bruin fans I know — are not a happy bunch these days. Basketball is a mess, football is a mess, and the search to replace Rick Neuheisel brought several rejections, perhaps the most embarrassing being the ill-fate attempt to lure Steve Sarkisian out of Seattle. (You never want to be rebuffed by someone in your own conference.) Hiring Mora, who hasn’t coached in college since 1984 and hasn’t coach anywhere since 2009, reeks of desperation. But the Hotline is not about to bash the decision. I think Mora could work in Westwood.Reaction II: As many UCLA fans no doubt realize — and AD Dan Guerrero surely recognized — there are plenty of similarities to USC hiring Pete Carroll. Both Mora and Carroll were the fourth (fifth?) choice. Both had experienced mild success as head coaches in the NFL before getting fired. Both are defensive minded coaches. Both were out of coaching at the time they were hired. Both are high-energy and enthusiastic.Reaction III: One difference between Carroll on Dec. 15, 2000 and Mora on Dec. 10, 2011 is the landing spot. Carroll took over a football factory that was in a lull. Mora takes over at a basketball school. Whether he’s successful or not depends as much on the university’s commitment to football as it does on Mora himself. If the school does not increase the salary pool for assistants … if it doesn’t improve the facilities, including the 80-yard practice field next to Pauley … if there isn’t a real push from the upper reaches of the administration to make football a priority (and this includes admissions) … then nobody will win consistently in Westwood.

Reaction IV: UCLA is, always and quite naturally, compared to USC. But in my opinion, the more accurate comparison right now is to Stanford. In 2006-07, the Cardinal had experienced one of the worst football stretches in school history and was at risk of permanent irrelevance due to a lack of commitment by the university. But the hiring of AD Bob Bowlsby ushered in a new era, with the school making an unprecedented commitment to the football program in the form of salaries and housing for assistants, recruiting budget and manpower, even a change in philosophy in the admissions office. Those infrastructure upgrades — the renovated stadium was a separate, earlier development — worked in unison with the hiring of Jim Harbaugh to lift Stanford out of the dark era. UCLA must do the same, or it won’t matter who’s doing the coaching.Reaction V: Far worse, potentially, than hiring your fourth choice is the perception that you are denying players their food money. The situation outlined here by the LAT’s Chris Foster will no doubt be used against UCLA in recruiting and fuels the appearance that Bruin football is a mess.

Action: Arizona State’s football search continues after negotiations end with June Jones.Reaction I: The search is entering its third week — Dennis Erickson was informed of his dismissal on Nov. 28 — and ASU certainly looks like it has no clue what it’s doing, especially when compared to Arizona and Washington State.Reaction II: Ending its pursuit of June Jones isn’t the problem. Pursuing Jones in the first place was the problem. The last thing ASU needs is the same thing it had before: a well-traveled, former NCAA and NFL coach approaching 60 whose teams don’t exactly ooze discipline. (Jones’ SMU team was 11th in CUSA in penalties and last in the country in turnover margin.)Reaction III: ASU has issued a series of statements criticizing and correcting media reports and pleading for patience from fans. And there’s no doubt that there have been some inaccurate reports. But have you ever noticed the direct correlation between schools that choose to partake in continuous damage control and schools that struggle to find a head coach? I don’t remember Arizona and Washington State bothering/having to issue statements on their websites.

Action: Pac-12 commish Larry Scott heads to China to begin setting the road map for a presence in Asia.
Reaction: The league has been planning an international push — it was first reported on the Hotline last spring — but is only now, with the TV Network foundation laid, moving its international plans to the front burner. It will take years, but eventually the conference will stage events in Asia (including football and basketball games). But the primary purpose of the push across the Pacific is for athletic marketing and educational/research opportunities.

Action: Arizona State freshman point guard Jahii Carson is ruled ineligible for the 2011-12 season.Reaction I: A big blow to the struggling Sun Devils and to the floundering Pac-12, which can hardly afford to lose talented players — and yet has lost a slew of them: UCLA’s Reeves Nelson, Arizona’s Sidiki Johnson and Oregon’s Jabari Brown have all left school or been asked to leave. (And let’s not forget the lengthy injury list.)Reaction II: I’m not suggesting that unhappy or disruptive players should be forced to remain with their team, or that talent should necessarily take precedence over chemistry. But the early-season attrition is unquestionably symbolic of a floundering conference. And we could have more of it if Arizona frosh Josiah Turner doesn’t clean up his act. (I’m shocked — shocked, I tell you! — that Turner is having problems less than a year after being booted off the Sac High team and transferring to Harvard-Westlake … err, the Quality Education Academy.

Jon Wilner

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Something is definitely up. We’ve just had a major evacuation of coach roughage….a coaching colonic as they say. When was the last time this happened? Sifting through the “chunks” of this roughage we find Wulff who was a total disgrace, Stoops the sideline clown, Erickson who was on the verge of retirement (and actually doing okay) and finally Neuheisel who was “Wallowing in mediocrity” (Along with someone else we know). The point being, all of this seems extreme for the sleepy Pac10/12. Larry has hustled his buns off to provide a bucketload of money and as everyone knows money, not water, is the universal solvent. If the Pac wants the bucks then it’s going to have to provide the product, the improved product, The New Product. No more lollygagging with morons like Wullf, etc., and Tedford and his absurd contract could be the Last of the Mohicans. Sark just got a raise to $2.4 Million/yr and all he did was put a coat of paint on the kennel and turn the program into a fixer upper…..so the stakes are very high. If this is what’s happening I hope it extends to the Athletic Departments, those Cold War relics straitjacketed by the Fascism of tenure, and rusting the vibrancy out of everything they touch. The Pac10 is achangin’ and it could be a lot better. One can only hope.

alchemist

What a mess.

I’m starting to believe Dan Guererro is every bit as bad as advertised. What did UCLA fans expect though? Yeah the Bruins have money to spend so they’re more competitive salary-wise but Westwood still ain’t cheap, facilities are lacking and whomever took the job there would have no idea who their boss will be when Guererro gets shown the door. If you’re a top-flight candidate with options then why take that job?

Ditto at ASU. It doesn’t have all the problems UCLA does but Lisa Love still appears to be an idiot who might not be employed all that much longer. For all the reasons Jon states she should have been fired as soon as her superiors found out she was seriously considering June Jones. I’m honestly surprised ASU was surprised at the backlash.

Hopefully a sliver of that TV money gets spent on better leadership.

milo

Guererro is safe. He was hired as a basketball oriented AD from Irvine and he has the Pauley renovation in his back pocket as his trump card. Once Pauley is done, he’ll get a lift, for a bit.

Calfan

Hiring a mediocre NFL coach does not do much for this Bruin (and Cal) alumnus. What bothers me is that his teams all had an apparent downwards trend – in terms of wins, effort, etc. That does not bode well for the Bruins, where they do not have great talent to begin with. But, we’ll see.

UCLA does have a good history – going back to the Aikman years – when the LA fan base was evenly split with SC. Pople will flock back to UCLA if they start winning. It’s a basketball school, but only because the football team has been bad for a long time. The minute they start winning, UCLA can challenge SC for LA supremacy.

Good luck Bruins!

Symphony Sid

Delicious irony that UCLA is playing in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl and their players are being denied food money checks.

Hey, don’t worry Bruins, the training table at the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl will feature all you can eat Mac & Cheese night!

AY CEE CEE

Virginia Tech is about to lose $1 million by having to eat 8K Sugar Bowl tickets.

Because Alabama and LSU fans were required to buy Sugar Bowl tickets and BCS Championship tickets as a package.

Naturally, those Alabama and LSU fans have dumped 35000 tickets into the secondary market (i.e. Craigslist, StubHub, etc.) where they are selling at below face value.

Same thing happened to UCONN last season, when Auburn and Oregon fans flooded the secondary market with 35000 Fiesta Bowl tickets. UCONN fans who wanted to go to the Fiesta Bowl were able to buy cheaper tickets in the secondary market than from the school.

Mephistopheles

Wasn’t their reputation for traveling well the reason the Sugar Bowl took Virginia Tech in the first place? Kansas State was more deserving. Baylor would have been more exciting. Boise State would have been, well, actually, a downgrade.

Norman

At the USC ‘football factory’ almost any coach with a NFL rep will do, offense or defense. But where recuiting is an issue like at UCLA and Stanford only a QB oriented coach will do. Get a QB recruit in the fold and then you can get OLmen and receivers and hope for the best with the rest.

Matt “MT” Hamilton

How good does Washington State with the hire of Mike Leach look now?

bullship

Mora is a bad hire. Period.

Why did UCLA or ASU not go after Leach? Really dumb.

Why don’t they look to current NFL and College assistants? That is where all the best coaches come from….Walsh, Green, Leach, Cooper, Johnson, etc….I would rather get a top young assistant than a head coach repeat failure. Belicheck is the only former UC that I can remember having success after washing out the 1st time- and if he hadn’t lucked into Brady he was likely done in New England.

But hey….wilner did not like the Harbaugh hire….maybe Mora will work….but ASU is screwed ….

Jim

bullship: “Belicheck is the only former UC that I can remember having success after washing out the 1st time- and if he hadn’t lucked into Brady he was likely done in New England.”

Marv Levy was a retread when Buffalo hired him. The Chiefs had fired him in 1982 with a 31-42 record, one winning season, and no playoff appearances in five years. That’s pretty much a washout in my book.

There’s also Mike Shanahan, but I’m not sure that counts since Al Davis hardly gave him much of a chance to prove himself the first time around.

alchemist

bullship:

I’m not sure Leach would have taken the UCLA or ASU jobs. Remember he was ousted from Texas Tech because of disagreements with leadership and bureaucracy there. There’s a very realistic chance of change in leadership at both ASU and UCLA which would open up the possibility of conflict with whoever his new boss would be. Contrast that with Wazzu where as far I can see, Bill Moos runs the ship and will be doing so for some time. Arizona can (rightly, I feel) be criticized for maybe having a shot at Leach and not getting him, but for ASU and UCLA I think Leach may have been beyond their reach.

milo

They should have offered the job to Ken Norton Jr.

AY CEE CEE

@Mephistophele:

No matter how well Virginia Tech fans travel, Virginia Tech was going to take a big loss on as many as 80000 unsold Sugar Bowl tickets.

Virginia Tech fans knew early on that they could buy much cheaper tickets from Alabama and LSU fans in the secondary market than from the Virginia Tech Athletic Department because the bowl committee running the BCS Championship game is selling tickets to 2 games as a bundle.

The Sugar Bowl committee doesn’t care, as it got its money.

The taxpayers in the Commonwealth of Virginia got screwed, as usual.

Tom McNamara

Jon,

UCLA is a mess. Firing Neuheisel was a decision based upon Guerrero’s innate confidence that he could lure away Chris Petersen. What he didn’t realize is that the new Boise State AD was able to cement the deal with the Big East, making all that unnecessary.

There were lots of candidates UCLA could have taken, (Randy Shannon, Aaron Pflugrad) but they settled on a guy who was local and didn’t need a housing allowance. Mora is just looking for a way back into the NFL. I doubt very seriously he is going to make a Carroll like about-face and become the focus of the program.

The Pauley renovation isn’t a panacea no matter how much they charge (and they can’t charge that much). When your AD says the reason your coach is fired is because you aren’t able to sustain attendance records from when the economy is booming… it’s clear who should be collecting unemployment.

The situation with ASU is far more interesting, because they don’t have as high academic standards as UCLA and also have a pro team to compete with. I would have guessed Mora would have gone with them, mainly so that he could have been hired away when the Cardinals fire Whisenhut. But I guess even Jim Mora doesn’t want to work for the Cardinals….

StanTheMan

Action: Stanford sells out its allotment of Fiesta Bowl tickets in less than five hours.

Is it just me? In my younger days, I did not really know a UCLA without Terry Donahue and their endless string of success while U$C was the one in a “lull” that lasted over a decade.

Tom McNamara

StanTheMan,

I have no doubt that Stanford would buy those tickets, given how much T. Boone Pickens will pay for them. We’ll see on Jan. 2 who has more fans given that the Fiesta is a closer game for Stanford alumni. (And that many of Stanford’s greatest alumni hail from Arizona…)

Now if the Cardinal filled up the MoneyBowl, I mean Sugar Bowl, that would be different….

KezarFan

First Wilner column in a while with which I take no issue.

Too bad coaches can’t realize that the risks taken on prima donna’s like Turner, Nelson, etc are never worth it. Their egos convince them that they can keep guys like that under control, when history suggests otherwise.

No one notices, either, that the problem at UCLA is crappy facilities and USC. Perhaps not in that order. Ever try traveling across town from Westwood to the Rose Bowl?

OT

Typical UCLA, hiring the cheapest football coach it can find.

Dan Guerrero hasn’t learned anything after the Slick Rick fiasco.

UCLA still doesn’t have a 120-yard practice field for football. Pathetic.

(It has 2 80-yard fields, one grass, one turf.)

Bootlegger

@StanTheMan: Wait until OT posts and tells us the “FACTS”. He will explain that Stanford does not travel well, that Bowls hate Stanford, and that Stanford fans are lame. He will do this because OT knows everything and is never wrong!!!!

Oh, wait, he posted just above me and didn’t mention that — contrary to his dire predictions — Stanford fans do travel well and, once again, bought their full allotment of tickets.

Oh well, I guess we will have to wait until next year for OT to again make his absurd pronouncements.

bullship

I stand corrected on Levy- but my basic point is …if a top college coach is not available- Peterson ( now in Mark Few territoy- why would he ever leave?), Martinez (struggled at Mich but that was more preception than reality imo- the expectaions at Mich are out of line- he took over a mess) and Leach (fired for bullship reasons- and his system offers a quick fix – at least his teams will score)- why not go for a College Assitant over the pro retread…guys like Weis, Sherman, Groh, etc have not exactly set the world on fire. Or go for a smaller school HC with a decent recent track record.

It is hard to imagine that WSU is considerd a better gig than UCLA or ASU- seriously. And I like WSU and attend bball and football games there ….but even with all its issues UCLA or ASU would be my choice. In fact every time those teams get a good coach- they move right to the top of the Pac- like USC and Washington.

Terry D, Vermiel etc…and Jim Mora- who could possibly think Mora will recruit well and win at UCLA? Hiring a current assitant would give you a better shot…lol.

Who is the TCU D cordinator? Or the Bosie OC? Or Someone from stanford or oregon the last few years? Or hell go to the Northwestern coach or maybe a guy from UW’s staff. Hell I would hire the CCSF coach before Mora….

tasser10

This “basketball school” has the second most Rose Bowl wins in the conference. Just because you say it doesn’t make it so, and just because Dan Guerrero is an incompetent buffoon who should be fired doesn’t mean UCLA cannot be relevant in football.

USC Maddog

All this hype about UCLA hiring a new coach to make them a football power house is just smoke and mirrors to hid the fact that the basketball team is lousy and this makes the Ruins feel less than average…average is where the gutties should feel happy to live when it comes to football.
In order to change the direction of the river that this school is flowing, you have to change the source of water feeding it and the mentality of UCLA is that it is alright to do “alright” when it comes to football because after all “UCLA is a basketball school”.
When this coach punches his time card and turns in 6-6 seasons, they will eventually fire the coach and AD and go through this whole drama act again.
Go Ruins!

StanTheMan

@Tom – 725 miles vs 1,025 miles. Not that different. Pretty much two days drive or a two hour flight from either place.

I don’t expect Stanford to outnumber Oklahoma St at the game, but the fact remains that we sell our bowl tickets and we travel. And that’s not just for BCS games – we did it for the 2009 Sun Bowl as well.

And OT can talk all the unfounded smack he wants. Let’s see how Cal does selling their allotment for a 400 mile drive / 1 hour flight. Heck they couldn’t sell their allotment for a 50 mile drive.

Jacob Wang

I can see why the school presidents wanted Larry Scott to market the league “outside the footprint”. He can market anything

Tom McNamara

Stan,

It’s really easy to get to Phoenix from Northern and Southern California. Southwest flies from nearly every airport in the Bay Area to Sky Harbor. L’siana… hope you have that United Miles card handy…

At least you are prepared to see lots of orange at the game though. Stanford can win the game on the field, but perhaps not the boardroom.

Pluto99

I’m not sure what point Tom is trying to make. Is it a surprise to anyone that a school with twice the undergrad enrollment is likely to bring more fans to a neutral site game?

What do you mean by “boardroom?” Is that to imply that OK St grads hold more positions of business power than Stanford grads? Even if true, what does that have to do with this discussion?

@tasser 10 – This “basketball school” has the second most Rose Bowl wins in the conference. Just because you say it doesn’t make it so.

Take you own advice. USC has by far the most Rose Bowl appearances and wins with 33 and 24. Washington has 14 appearance and 7 wins. UCLA has 12 appearances and 5 wins. Stanford has 12 appearances and 5 wins.

Just because you say it doesn’t make it so.

Tom McNamara

Pluto,

The point I was trying to make is that Stan was pointing out how well Stanford travelled. But the bowls have incentive to care about quantity too, something he seemed to be glossing over.

Rich Rodriguez

Stop ragging on Turner just because you said he would have eligibility issues and he didn’t. Get over it Wilner.

StanTheMan

Well do you think that if the allocation had been 25,000 instead of 17.500 that Stanford wouldn’t have sold out? Doubt it.

My point is that the argument that Stanford doesn’t travel well is complete bunk.

Pluto99

Tom,

And selling out the 17,500 ticket allotment is clearly a sign that Stanford can travel. Clearly, we’ll send more people to nicer locations that are closer to our home base of NorCal. But the fact remains, there will be 20,000+ Stanford fans at the Fiesta bowl. I can sympathize with the bowl committees that the original purpose of the bowls is to increase tourism and boost the local economies. But they also want to maximize TV ratings, which this Stanford team should really help. Even without the rule of 4 clause, I think Stanford would have gotten a BCS bid this year. The Fiesta bowl would have been assured good fan support with OSU and would have chosen Stanford for the TV ratings. Best of both worlds. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Sugar had also wanted the Cardinal to boost the ratings and general public interest. Michigan vs. Stanford would have been a fun match up with a Rose Bowl-esque flavor.

Ranger John

Wisdom, did you know that Terry Donahue was at SJS but was told he was too small to play. Transferred to UcLA and was MVP of the Rose bowl.